


everyone's watching (to see the fallout)

by hey_mickey



Series: Mickey's Umbrellas [7]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Betting on the Lives of Teenagers to Soothe Your Boredom, Gen, Office Work, Typical Office Shenangins, some thoughts on the commission, you dont have to read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 00:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20555474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hey_mickey/pseuds/hey_mickey
Summary: The Handler's had her eyes on Number Five for quite some time, little does she know..so have the other Commission Workers





	everyone's watching (to see the fallout)

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't figure out how to end this, but here.. take it.
> 
> I HAVE TOO MANY WIPS HELP.

They’d discuss it over lunch, like it was some casual everyday thing at work, not the life of a person. It was simply another funny story, “Did you see what the kid did today?” Or “you’ll never believe what happened!”

Here in the cubicles and harsh conditions of sitting in an office all day, the mind tends to be on the rather indifferent side. 

There’s a massive betting pool running in the underground of Commission headquarters. It’s mostly on the mundane things, how much liquor the kid could consume, how many rib cages he’d accidentally step through, how many times he’d return to the place where he’d buried his siblings. All silly mundane things that could be predicted with numbers and estimates, something not uncommon in Commission headquarters.

But none of that compared to the betting pool on his life. Because not even the best of the best could calculate every single factor into the lifespan of a teleporting miracle baby. The life of a kid that most of them didn’t even bother to know the name of, their expectations for his lifespan quite low.

They held parties for milestones. He was a mascot of sorts, they praised him in the halls.

“The apocalypse kid reached 16 today!” 

“I can’t believe he’s made it this far.”

“Who’s still in the race?”

“I think Joel got out today, he said only 2 years.”

“Please, any reasonable person would say around 3.”

“You’re both wrong, he’s going to succumb to starvation in 6 years, I’m telling you.”

“6 years is crazy, you won’t win.”

“We’ll see about that.”

As the kid grew up, time flying by for him, the betting pool prizes grew more and more insane. First, off the initial 30,000 American dollars bet, the money had increased from there to the hundreds of millions. But that wasn’t what made the bet so intoxicating, money didn’t matter to the workers of the Commission. The promises woven in were the real bread and butter.

The first promise added was the promise of your own personal briefcase to travel anywhere you liked in the world, (as long as you didn’t mess up the timeline of course, and the office workers knew better than anyone just how brutal the temporal assassins could be.) The freedom to be able to leave the office they had to spend the rest of their lives in was too good to be true, many workers changed their bets after that.

The second was the ability to insert yourself into one pivotal moment of history, to have your name imprinted forever, replacing one person involved in a conflict. To be recognized for your efforts. The money skyrocketed. 

The third was the tipping point for many, the ability to be allowed to see their families that they left behind once more. Some of the office workers bawled their eyes out and added multiple more bets on the life of the apocalypse teen.

Eventually, there had to be a limit set on the amount of bets one can place and the office rioted. The fights continued for weeks until an agreement was set at 10 total.

Everyone took the opportunity to bet all 10 of their votes on the kid, who had just hit 18 and was now shooting upwards, though not as much as he probably could’ve with proper food. 

Once he was 18 was when the concerns began to be voiced. Of course, there had been whispers before, about the cruelty of placing cash over the life of a child, but they had only been whispers. And once he’d spent 5 years in the end, these whispers turned to shouts.

“He’s talking to a mannequin. Do you know how depressing that is?”

“The management should be doing something, the kid’s smart, did you see that equation he wrote yesterday? I couldn’t figure that one out for a week.”

“That’s an obscene amount of alcohol for an 18 year old.”

“I had an 18 year old kid when I got recruited and if anyone ever did this to him, I’d rip their throat out.”

“Yea, I bet almost 1,000 on the kid, but I regret it now, you know? He almost collapsed from dehydration yesterday.”

Other people than the office workers began to take notice of him such as the temporal assassins and the time calculators. Multiple requests came into the offices from the assassins to just put the kid out of his misery, or at least put him to work. The calculators were often seen taking photos of his math and applying it to their own.

There were protests. Office workers with little time on their hands began to research the apocalypse teen. They’d relay the information to the others, whispering as the management walked by, looking for the troublemakers who started the rumors. The anger grew, many office workers pulled their bets from the pools, furious at the management for keeping a kid in the apocalypse. 

They related to him, because just like him, they were trapped, held down in place simply by the neatly manicured hands of the Handler. She began to patrol the halls during breaks, eyeing the files room and waiting for an unsuspecting office worker to try and sneak in. Many met the furious nails of the Handler during these attempts and never were the same after that.

It only boosted the protests.

Eventually, the management had had enough, they shot down every single betting pool and hid all of the apocalypse files in one place. They put one trustworthy person in charge of everything apocalypse and swiftly eliminated everyone who’d loudly protested against the treatment of the apocalypse kid, (he was still called that, even after they had learned his name.)

The apocalypse kid faded out of the collective memory of the office workers. Until he showed up, almost 40 years later (in progressive time, not Commission time). Being office workers, they weren’t allowed to see him very often, but they did relish each time he was near the offices and laughed at all the little ways he rebelled against his instructions. 

“The instructions simply said to kill William Frontier, but the apocalypse kid set the entirety of London on fire! He’s crazy!”

“Apocalypse kid almost went to go see his siblings during his assignment today, he almost broke the entire timeline.”

“I wish he did, we need a day off.”

“God, did you hear what apocalypse kid did this time?”

“No.”

“He increased the amount of time it will take Julius Caesar to die by almost fifteen minutes.”

“Shit man, that’s actually hilarious. Did management kick his ass for it?”

“No they just let it slide. They’re getting lazier.”

They rooted for apocalypse kid, Number Five all the way until March 24, 2019, when he enacted a plan he apparently had planned for years to escape. The Handler sent Hazel and Cha-Cha after him and the office workers waited for the news of Number Five’s demise.

Imagine their surprise when a younger version of Number Five waltzed into their offices with the Handler at his side. He barely spared them a passing glance but they all watched him with wide eyes and mutters. They side-eyed him as he awkwardly typed at a typewriter for maybe three minutes before shutting down Dot with a simple, “I must have utter silence to complete this task.” One of the workers snorted into their coffee as Dot stared at his back, flabbergasted.

Number Five ignored the whispers of the workers when he entered the forbidden void of the Handler’s office. 

Then he blew up the entire base, allowing himself to escape.

As the Commission office workers scattered around outside the burning building, watching the destruction of the place they’d slaved away in for so long burn, an office worker spoke, “Well, what are we supposed to do now?”

None of them had any clue.

**Author's Note:**

> TA-DA! It suX
> 
> Peace!


End file.
